AoS Shadowstrike advice

I'm just wondering how people get the best out of our Shadowstrike battalion? I've been playing less than a year and I'm playing a number of games at the end of November that will be against Nighthaunt, Nagash, Stormcast and Khorne.

I've decided to try a Shadowstrike with 2 x 40 skinks, and 6 x rippers (below is a rough list I've thrown together as an idea, this isn't final). Is this the best list to use? How would you go about using this list to maximise my chances against such difficult opponents?

TOTAL 2000/2000
This lists gives you high amount of flexibility to your strategy. It is heavy summoning list which means that depending on what opponent you face
you can summon the appropriate units to get the job done.

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9 ripperdactyls 420
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This lists gives you high amount of flexibility to your strategy. It is heavy summoning list which means that depending on what opponent you face
you can summon the appropriate units to get the job done.

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I get that 9 rippers are terrifying and can shred to pieces even large units with 40 models, but aren't they a little overkill?
I wonder if (given that you plan to summon a lot), wouldn't it be better to have a unit of 3 and a unit of 6 rippers, just to have 2 toads on the battlefield and exploit the summoning of other rippers, recycling the losses.

Have you tried a double squad?
what was yout usual tactic with 9 rippers in a game?

Slann, Astrolith, Starpriest, 2x40 skinks and 6xRipperdactyls are you base. Take whatever you want for the points left. Vortex and Cogs are recommended, but this is true for any seraphon list, and EotG or Bastiladon always a good choice.

In your list I'd unite two knight units into 1, so they have more impact on charge. If you want them for scoring, summoning skinks may be a better way.

Slann, Astrolith, Starpriest, 2x40 skinks and 6xRipperdactyls are you base. Take whatever you want for the points left. Vortex and Cogs are recommended, but this is true for any seraphon list, and EotG or Bastiladon always a good choice.

In your list I'd unite two knight units into 1, so they have more impact on charge. If you want them for scoring, summoning skinks may be a better way.

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meh, the knights together with the bastiladon & scar vet are his only frontline. Uniting those into 1 big unit does rather limit his options for actually capable melee troops. It seems beneficial to actually have more than 3 units that are capable in melee to chase someone of an objective and the like.

I get that 9 rippers are terrifying and can shred to pieces even large units with 40 models, but aren't they a little overkill?
I wonder if (given that you plan to summon a lot), wouldn't it be better to have a unit of 3 and a unit of 6 rippers, just to have 2 toads on the battlefield and exploit the summoning of other rippers, recycling the losses.

Have you tried a double squad?
what was yout usual tactic with 9 rippers in a game?

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in many cases i need the 9 ripper unit keep in mind they do 68 wounds vs 45 wounds of the 6 ripper unit when they shadowstrike
45 no rend wounds most of the times is not enough to wipe out a unit of 40 skeletons, 30 plague bearers, 30 tzaangors and now with the beasts of chaos a super zerk army you will have problems. Also keep in mind that even if your kill 20-30 with a command point the damaged unit can become unbreakable and you can loose the objective. Moreover units with 3+ save or 4+ with rerolls (stormcast eternal, dryads in the woods ,Kurnoth hunters)
need a unit of 9 rippers to get damaged enough and many times even 9 rippers cant be so effective. Something important is that shadowstrike list lacks rend which means that you basicaly count on the large number of wounds output of rippers for an alpha strike to give you time scoring the objectives with the skinks and slow down your opponent while he will have to kill your rippers first to reach the objectives or recapture them. TO end with sometimes you can kill multiple units with 9 rippers unit for example a unit of 20 arkanaut company and a unit of 10 arkanaut company in a single combat phase.

Also bastiladon sucks it is very random, now you dont have the choise to reroll random dices with the new faq for kroak and starseer and also the look out sir gives -1 to hit characters combined with the -1 to hit artifacts makes the characters almost invicible againts bastiladons (you need 6+ to hit and sacrifice terrain now does not help you). In addition many armies ignores the -1 rend and a few ignores all rends. To sum up against some armies bastiladon is completely useless (sylvaneth 2+ save ignore -1 rend, go for salamanders with summoning if you want to damage them)

Also bastiladon sucks it is very random, now you dont have the choise to reroll random dices with the new faq for kroak and starseer and also the look out sir gives -1 to hit characters combined with the -1 to hit artifacts makes the characters almost invicible againts bastiladons (you need 6+ to hit and sacrifice terrain now does not help you). In addition many armies ignores the -1 rend and a few ignores all rends. To sum up against some armies bastiladon is completely useless (sylvaneth 2+ save ignore -1 rend, go for salamanders with summoning if you want to damage them)

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mwha, that doesn't mean the bastiladon sucks. Bigger models won't benefit from "look out sir", and those are the ones you were already aiming your bastiladon at anyways. Smaller heroes wasn't what a bastiladon was used for.

Also, if the enemy has his characters that well protected, aim for something else. There should be more than enough available targets. If nothing else just blast away his bodyguard. Very few characters that can benefit from look out sir will do all that well once their support has been blasted apart...

True.
For armies that negate rend it could be more useful the basti with snakes... Which can be done easily if you summon it.

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Mwha, the snakes need quite a lot of enemies surrounding them to be comparable. Unless your opponent is solely bringing 2+ or 3+ rend immune nonsense Id expect that the solar engine should still prove usefull. Maybe not to snipe characters, but wiping out his supporting units might be more than worthwhile.

To be honest, I wish the snakes got a buff. It's great if you can put your bastiladon surrounded by 4+ units, but the moment it's stuck fighting 1 unit it's basicly terrible (unless you get stupidly Lucky). I'd love for it to have some mechanic to Ensure it is at least still a worthy behemoth in that case. Have snakes that "miss" do something semi-usefull at least.

mwha, that doesn't mean the bastiladon sucks. Bigger models won't benefit from "look out sir", and those are the ones you were already aiming your bastiladon at anyways. Smaller heroes wasn't what a bastiladon was used for.

Also, if the enemy has his characters that well protected, aim for something else. There should be more than enough available targets. If nothing else just blast away his bodyguard. Very few characters that can benefit from look out sir will do all that well once their support has been blasted apart...

The rend protection is more problematic though..

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Lets say you play shadowstrike with an astrolith bearer to give you reroll to hit for your basti. You make 7 attacks averg 4+ to hit rerollable 3+ to wound 5,5 successefull hit after reroll 3-4 wounds with rend -1 DMG 2 and now i am wondering what unit you can wipe out ??? Lets say 40 skinks ?? 40 skeletons??? 40 ungors??? 30 Grimghast reapers?? 30 dryads ?? 30 plague bearers or 6 plague drones??? 30 witch elves??? etc etc etc..
bastiladons are not wothy in these edition not only because of their dmg out put but also because the new mission demands more models to be competitive and more Mages so in duality of death mission basti can be usefull but now i cant think that a basti could help you enough in any mission for their points without reroll the random attack dices... in thundersquake battalion they became much more competitive and hit a lot harder , harder to kill and etc... but thundersquake cant be competitive because it lacks models..

Would you use a 9 ripper shadowstrike to fight against Nighthaunt? He uses a block of 30 Grimghast Reapers and I'm yet to be able to kill them off with all his healing abilities.

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if you do the maths they do around 70 wounds. To wipe out the unit if your player have CP to make it unbreakable and then heal it you need to wipe out the unit, to make that happen you need 72 wound so he saves 36 and then from death save 6 more so total 30 dead models
So with 9 rippers and 40 skinks shooting at them you make that happen
Thats why i think 9 rippers are better than 6 because now with the command points its a lot harder to destroy units
Because without command points event if you kill 20 out of 30 that would be enough because the rest models would die in the battleshock but now things have changed

True.
For armies that negate rend it could be more useful the basti with snakes... Which can be done easily if you summon it.

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I think basti with snakes could be useful sometimes against multiple strong units with good saves and few wounds and it could work fine with summoning it but it does the mortal wound at the start of each combat phase so you need to be successful when you charging it (you need to roll 9 or to use cogs for 7 even 6 if your constelation gives u +1). I prefer generally to summon a lot of salamanders but if you need a 6 to charge maybe bastiladon can work better

if you do the maths they do around 70 wounds. To wipe out the unit if your player have CP to make it unbreakable and then heal it you need to wipe out the unit, to make that happen you need 72 wound so he saves 36 and then from death save 6 more so total 30 dead models
So with 9 rippers and 40 skinks shooting at them you make that happen
Thats why i think 9 rippers are better than 6 because now with the command points its a lot harder to destroy units
Because without command points event if you kill 20 out of 30 that would be enough because the rest models would die in the battleshock but now things have changed

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Great, thanks for your advice. I don't actually own 9 rippers yet, only 6, but I will give it a go.

bastiladons are not wothy in these edition not only because of their dmg out put but also because the new mission demands more models to be competitive and more Mages so in duality of death mission basti can be usefull but now i cant think that a basti could help you enough in any mission for their points without reroll the random attack dices... in thundersquake battalion they became much more competitive and hit a lot harder , harder to kill and etc... but thundersquake cant be competitive because it lacks models..

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I could agree that Bastiladon is less mandatory for us, given that our first dino choice has become the EotG... but from where you took this idea that we lack models?
Yeah, at the beginning of the game we have few units on the battlefield (almost certainly less then our opponent), but with the amount of summoning we have, we can easily place 1-2 new units each turn, since turn one.

At 1000-1500 pts, a unit of 40 grimghast reapers is an awful objective holder, as you are keeping a costly unit upon an objective, while i can go for the other ones.
At 2000 pts, your opponent can surely have more hordes, but at that point also Seraphon will start with more models/hordes.

I could agree that Bastiladon is less mandatory for us, given that our first dino choice has become the EotG... but from where you took this idea that we lack models?
Yeah, at the beginning of the game we have few units on the battlefield (almost certainly less then our opponent), but with the amount of summoning we have, we can easily place 1-2 new units each turn, since turn one.

At 1000-1500 pts, a unit of 40 grimghast reapers is an awful objective holder, as you are keeping a costly unit upon an objective, while i can go for the other ones.
At 2000 pts, your opponent can surely have more hordes, but at that point also Seraphon will start with more models/hordes.

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i agree EOTG ,at least one, is a must. I said in the thundersquake battalion we lack models not generally, of course we dont lack models generally.

Lets say you play shadowstrike with an astrolith bearer to give you reroll to hit for your basti. You make 7 attacks averg 4+ to hit rerollable 3+ to wound 5,5 successefull hit after reroll 3-4 wounds with rend -1 DMG 2 and now i am wondering what unit you can wipe out ??? Lets say 40 skinks ?? 40 skeletons??? 40 ungors??? 30 Grimghast reapers?? 30 dryads ?? 30 plague bearers or 6 plague drones??? 30 witch elves??? etc etc etc..
bastiladons are not wothy in these edition not only because of their dmg out put but also because the new mission demands more models to be competitive and more Mages so in duality of death mission basti can be usefull but now i cant think that a basti could help you enough in any mission for their points without reroll the random attack dices... in thundersquake battalion they became much more competitive and hit a lot harder , harder to kill and etc... but thundersquake cant be competitive because it lacks models..

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Possible things to do with your bastiladon's solar engine's laser:

Wipe out a utility unit, for example an objective grabber, forcing him to waste an expensive unit on the objective

Wipe out a protective fodder unit, opening up an easy path to charge his fancier stuff

Wipe out a support hero; your necromancers, your skink starpriests. They might have a look-out sir to protect em, but these support units tend to have few wounds and terrible saves, your solar engine will easily wound them badly

Force an enemy to spend precious CP on a (horde) unit to prevent it from losing significantly to battleshock.

Knock off those horde bonusses by wiping out 20-25% of em. You don't need to kill all 40 skinks for the effect of your laser to be noticable. Hell even if the horde bonus remains, losing 20% of his attacks is going to make it noticeably less effective

Significantly weaken a monster causing him to lose enough wounds to lose effectiveness, again it doesn't need to die for the laser to have noticeable effects. Shooting that stegadon in the face before it charges is going to save you a lot of trouble. It only needs 3 wounds before it loses D6 stomp attacks and drops its rend on its horns from 3 to 2.

Chip away at a more elite high statline multimodel unit, SCE are a nice example of this. Basicly anything in that army is worth chipping away at as each model lost is going to be noticeable.

And lastly threaten to badly hurt the stuff he cares about thus restricting his movement. Having a giant laser of doom that can pump out 24 wounds, averaging 10-12, at -1 rend at 20" range is usefull. He can't just put a unit of say 10 skinks on an objective, they are liable to be blasted away in a single turn. He can't leave his necromancer out in the open, it'l be vaporized. This will have significant impact on how your opponent plays and can and should be used to your advantage. Even if your bastiladon ends up causing no wounds the entire game the fact alone that your opponent has to work around the risk that he might do significant damage from range can be worth it.

And that's just what's the laser is for. That's ignoring the fact that you basicly have a walking wall to hide your supporting heroes behind and that it is more than capable of tying up a dangerous enemy. A bastiladon is more than worth it.

i dont agree with you i would never pay 280 points to kill 10 skinks when your objective power is ZERO it is possible to pay 280 for a 30 man units to shoot a necromance or something like that not a single model. In addition a necromance when he is 3inches near unit get -1 to Hit from look out sir
and 4+ to drop the wound to skeletons if you do the maths he is never gonna die. Also you dont count the artifacts that a hero can take (artifacts of the realms) that give an extra protection from shooting to many fragile characters. You said to seriously hurt a moster thats completelly situational the most monsters-character behemoths have tha ability to heal wounds (nurgle sylvaneth death etc) . I dont know in what kind of opponent you refer but if your oponent is competitive and he is playing a competitive list you are not gonna kill any units and if you kill a 10 man unit he is gonna resummon it (skink, skeletons are not played in 10s man squads and if you kill 10 out of 30 or 40 they will be back next turn) if he is playing DoK you would have -1 extra to hit, if they are dryads they would be near forest and you would have -1 to hit too, if he is playing stormcast ok but it is situational i dont want to have something which cost 280 points completelly situational. This is my opinion if you like i cant chnage your mind but i wouldnt recommend it ever in the 2nd edition of age of sigmar ..Last if you want to play it better summon it in your second round 24 summoning points for 280 points